I have a MSI k7t266 pro 2 ver 2.0 motherboard in my tower I just got a little while back from a friend for very cheap. I have had shit computers all my life and want to get into a real good system. I am wondering if this board would be good to use and upgrade or if I am better off finding a newer one. It has a AMD athlon XP processor and I know the boards from 2002. Anyone have a link to a real nice motherboard I could look into getting? Is this one kinda out of date to where I should use it as a backup computer? I am looking for a multi use device. Something that supports heavy gaming too.

to start off, yeah that boards really old, i wouldnt bother puttin too much into it.

i built a new system couple months ago, and i used this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00..._ya_oh_product for my MoBo. great performer, plenty of extra's, and at about $230 you really do get alot of board for the money. used a i7-920 proc, 6gb corsair dominator and threw it in a Cooler Master HAF full tower. easiest build i have ever done... ever! and ive built quite a few machines.

i also put two geforce gtx260 core 216's in SLI. and couple months later, the only problems i seem to be having are the beta 64-bit video drivers with basically open beta OS (windows 7 RC 64-bit). super fast and rips through everything. i did a benchmark with HL2 at 1920x1200 all video settings at max and averaged 160+ frames per second.

little pricy i know, but i take my computers seriously heh. hope it helps ya in any way.

Any info helps, thank you. I have been into computers but never bothered getting to into building them. Now I have the time and getting the money and parts I feel like having some fun with them. I just spent the good half of a day figuring out why my computer was over heating to 70C. I figured it out and the comp I have has a smart fan 2 in it. Who ever used this had it plugged in and thats it. This fan comes with a harness for a temp probe and a harness for a potentiometer to control the fan speed. None of these came with the machine and the fan was running to low. I had to hook a switch to it to control the speed. The fan can blow 75.6 CFM at 5600 rpm. When its going full speed sounds like a turbo.

im a bit up on the higher end, before the hard drive upgrades i believe i spent about $1400, and that was reusing 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives and a sound card. skip a video card and use a single one will drop a couple hundred off.

im gonna go on again about the case i got, the Cooler Master HAF 932. i love it. it is big, bulky and heavy, but room for anything and everything, a cut out for heatsink backplates and easy cable routing behind the motherboard tray. this was by far my easiest build, and when i added these hard drives i had to remove 1 of the video cards to get back at the SATA ports, and even all that was super easy and took me seconds to do.

any other questions on components feel free to ask and ill be glad to help, computer building is one of my favorite things in the world heh.

Athlon XP will NOT support heavy gaming :\ I used to run an Athlon adn the highest I could get mine to run would be at 2.1ghz (stock 1.8). Go with a newer board. I just got a board that will support up to a quad core CPU (has a Celeron D in it now) for around $100 CPU included.

im a bit up on the higher end, before the hard drive upgrades i believe i spent about $1400, and that was reusing 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives and a sound card. skip a video card and use a single one will drop a couple hundred off.

im gonna go on again about the case i got, the Cooler Master HAF 932. i love it. it is big, bulky and heavy, but room for anything and everything, a cut out for heatsink backplates and easy cable routing behind the motherboard tray. this was by far my easiest build, and when i added these hard drives i had to remove 1 of the video cards to get back at the SATA ports, and even all that was super easy and took me seconds to do.

any other questions on components feel free to ask and ill be glad to help, computer building is one of my favorite things in the world heh.

I read the reviews for that controller and it said it doesnt support some bigger fans. I looked at the other ones and they also said something about some fans dont work with them. I was looking into getting one of these at one point but I would want them to control all fans including bigger ones. Seen anymore that top the one you listed?

I read the reviews for that controller and it said it doesnt support some bigger fans. I looked at the other ones and they also said something about some fans dont work with them. I was looking into getting one of these at one point but I would want them to control all fans including bigger ones. Seen anymore that top the one you listed?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811999171 seems to be one of the better controllers from the reviews i read ( one guy even stated he has a HAF 932, like mine, and works fine). not as pretty as the NZXT, but appears to work better. i admit i was lookin at the nzxt pretty much for looks.

Well, from what I understand, two boards, male and female, get together and have a baby plank. From there, the female board turns into a "mother" of this baby plank, thus resulting in a "mother board".